Without even going into fairy tale revisions and feminism and evil queens and Snow White as one of the more passive fairy tale princesses, the movie makes no sense. It reads as though there were one script long ago shipping Snow White and the Huntsman, but then they decided they had to keep the prince in there and give him some backstory with Snow White. And by the way, make him a cool archer so he can compete with the Huntsman. Also, random apple in the backstory. And maybe it will look like Snow White will journey around the kingdom to rally support. Except wait, no, she can kind of magically bond with animals. Maybe. Or talk to birds? Or maybe that's the fairies in the birds. Hey, while we're at it, let's put in some Princess Mononoke. And LotR, because that's always good. And Snow White is the bestest because she has a good heart! Wait no, it's because she's the embodiment of all of the land and Communes with Nature (TM)! Wait no, it's because she's a great war leader despite having no training! Wait no, go back to the heart!

I really could have done without not one, but two people kissing a corpse on the lips.

I especially could have done without the kiss in which the kisser drunkenly compares her to his dead wife.

Also, if the movie wanted us to ship Thor/Snow White, they could have used less dead wife and more interaction. And if they wanted us to ship William/Snow White... why the kiss? It was also confusing because they deliberately seemed to be toning down any sort of Thor/Snow White shippiness and ramping up Prince/Snow White, and then somehow forgot to do something with the kiss.

Random molestation and rape mentions!

Guy is evil because he is scarred and has a bad haircut!

Dwarves are supposedly charming and win over the audience by dancing with Snow White. Which would be boring but fine were it not for his randomly sticking his face in her breasts while she looks slightly awkward. Nevertheless, it is still a Tragic Moment when he dies.

As mentioned, the movie attempts to separate physical beauty from goodness, then proceeds to make the dwarves comic relief, the scarred albino brother evil, the one black guy a menacing henchman, and shows Ravenna's deterioration as related to her consumption of evil power and ties it to how terrible it is for women to age.

That little flashback attempting to make Ravenna sympathetic might have worked better if there had been more scenes about how Ravenna needs the purity of Snow White's heart and Snow White not hating Ravenna and moments in which Ravenna is slightly more sympathetic and less scene chewing.

Seriously, what was with the fairies?!

Snow White in armor might have been cool if, you know, the movie had built up toward something like Snow White learning to fight, Snow White recruiting people to her cause, Snow White inspiring people by doing instead of by being a magical girl of goodness. Or if she'd gotten more than a handful of lines before her Rousing Speech.

There's probably a lot more bad, but I can't even.

The worst part is, I can make this into several cool movies and even several mediocre ones in my head.

Snow White escapes the castle and is a bit feral because she has been locked up since she was a small girl. The Huntsman teaches her how to fight in the woods, and she hones her desire to bring down the evil queen. Cue army, armor, rousing speech, LotR-esque big battle. This is what I would have liked to see.

Ravenna gets more backstory about how she was once like Snow White, but made beautiful due to the ravages of the patriarchy. She needs Snow White's pure heart to cement her power or regain her youth, though secretly she wants it because it is pure. Snow White oddly does not hate the woman who has imprisoned her for years and offers up her heart in a different way. I could have watched this too!

Snow White is the pure embodiment of the land and heals people and restores the land to its prior state by traveling around, and eventually wields this power to defeat Ravenna. I probably would not have liked this, but at least it would have made sense.

A very traditional but grimdark retelling of the Disney version, in which Snow White doesn't keep house for the dwarves, but everyone is grungy and unwashed. There is no huntsman, except in small bits, and mostly it is about Snow White and William finding each other again, with a touching True Love's Kiss making everything all better. I probably would not have liked this either, but at least it would have made sense.

So yeah. That was a movie. It had some great eye candy, I liked the clothes, and there were bits that could have been something, but the plot and pacing made even less sense than your standard Hollywood action flick.

I would have watched #1. But just from the previews this looked like a pretty but incoherent mess. I cannot figure out why it's apparently a *popular* incoherent mess. (Haven't seen it, will probably catch on DVD eventually because why not?)

I was sadly kind of excited by the posters of Snow White in practical armor and a sword! And I could have done with a completely incoherent version of #1 OR #2, because it's hard enough to see those stories in any way in Hollywood, but instead we got.... #1-2+3-4*67?

I couldn't take the movie seriously from the minute Snow fled the castle at the direction of the two black and white birds (that were unknowingly couriers for the fairies? IDEK) and there was a horse just ... waiting for her on the ramparts. Kneeling down, in preparation for her to get on. That was the moment when I switched off my brain/critical thinking abilities because I was fairly sure the movie wouldn't require me to actually use them. And I wasn't wrong!

Agree 100% on all the ways it just flat-out didn't make sense.

I would have LOVED THE SHIT out of Alternate Version of the Movie Option #1 in your list of Ways This Movie Could've Been Better.

You know, even then I was willing to go along! I would have absolutely hated the whole "She talks to animals and they guide her yay mystical nature powers" thing, but it kind of would have made sense as a really weird take on the Disney singing to birds. Except. They kind of go there? And then they don't? And then she is a warrior princess? And then she kills Ravenna due to something about fairest blood and not Nature Power and the one move the Huntsman taught her?

After I saw the movie, I looked up how many people were involved in writing the script - I'm not sure how these things work, but according to IMDb, it looks like at least 3 or 4 people worked on the script. At my job, I'm currently on a committee charged with writing and revising (and revising and revising) a many-page-long policy, so I know the horrors that come of trying to write one thing with multiple minds butting in. I have this image of each of the people working on the script having a favorite idea. No one could agree on what to use as the focus of the story...so they used everything and focused on nothing, creating a mess that made no sense.

Here's is the movie the optimistic part of my brain thought Snow White and the Huntsman might be:

It starts with her birth, with her mother dying, and her father remarrying badly. When the queen takes over and starts killing people, a young Snow White barely manages to escape. As the years pass, the queen's rule destroys the land, hurts the people, etc. The queen's right hand man is the Huntsman.

All this time, Snow White has been living with a group of rebels (probably including the dwarves) way off in a forest somewhere, training and eventually building up an army. The Queen gives the Huntsman a standing order to find Snow White and either kill her or bring her back to the castle to be killed (I can't decide which would be better). Anyway, the Huntsman finds her, but instead of following the Queen's orders, he forms an alliance with Snow White, because he has not been happy with the queen's rule. The Huntsman acts as a spy within the castle and does his best to allow Snow White to continue to plan and train in peace. There are scenes that show the audience how the Huntsman and Snow White gradually come to respect and trust each other, but I have decided that there is no room for an actual romantic subplot.

So, near the end of the movie, Snow White and her army storm the castle. At first, it looks like the Queen has the upper hand, but the Huntsman betrays her, allowing Snow White to get close enough to defeat the Queen. The movie ends with Snow White as the new Queen, which is great, although it's clear she'll have her work cut out for her, cleaning up the mess the Queen left behind, even with the help of everyone she worked with during the rebellion.

Every once in a while, I think up scenes that might make parts of it more interesting. Parts of it probably wouldn't make much sense and would be a bit screwed up...and sadly I still think my idea would be better than the movie they filmed. I think I was a wee bit influenced by The Twelve Kingdoms, though.

As mentioned, the movie attempts to separate physical beauty from goodness, then proceeds to make the dwarves comic relief, the scarred albino brother evil, the one black guy a menacing henchman, and shows Ravenna's deterioration as related to her consumption of evil power and ties it to how terrible it is for women to age.

WTG HOLLYWOOD

This was also hilarious, because everyone sounds seriously weirded out by the fairy-bird-things. I almost want to see those, but not on a big screen.

Oh wow, I can't believe I managed to forget about that. I guess I blocked it out. When I saw the movie, a good portion of the audience, including me and the friend I was with, gasped in horror at that moment. Seeing as how there had been no really nice places prior to the sanctuary, my first thought was that this was going to be the moment when it was revealed that the happy, pretty sanctuary was not nearly as safe as it seemed.

Me too! When she was following the fairies and then everyone went after her, I thought at first they were trying to catch her before the fairies ate her or led her into a pit full of spikes or something.